AS

I found this course to be very informative for those who are beginning to learn about chickens or would like to expand their knowledge to improve conditions for their backyard flock.

AA

Feb 17, 2019

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this course is very gainful for any person who is involved in any type of poultry production system directly or indirectly i would instigate all to involve and complete this course.

Из урока

Introduction to Animal Behaviour: Domestication, Behaviour Development and Learning, the Senses

Welcome to the first week of the Chicken Behaviour and Welfare Course. If you haven't seen it - watch the video which introduces you to the course: you can find it under "Getting Started; Welcome!" During this lesson, we will consider what makes a domestic animal, how behaviour develops in the chicken from before hatching and beyond, different types of learning and the senses - vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch.

Преподаватели

Dr Victoria Sandilands

Senior scientist

Текст видео

Sense of smell, like taste, is not as critical to birds as it is to mammals. Sense of smell is quite sensitive in some birds, but probably less so in poultry. Nevertheless, poultry have been shown to form preferences or aversion to a wide range of odors. This again demonstrates learning behavior. However, one important odor that chickens can detect at lower levels than us and is important to their well being is ammonia. Ammonia is produced when microbes break down uric acid, which birds excrete. Ammonia is caustic, causing skin lesions, eye problems, contact dermatitis, respiratory problems and others. But even before these problems arise, chickens can detect it. Animals sense of touch, in other words, their ability to feel (not to reach out and touch something else), is governed by different types of somatic sensory nerve cells. These enable us and chickens to feel pressure, touch, pain, heat and cold, and also limb position. So your nerves tell you if your leg is poised in the air ready to take a step or if you have both feet on the ground. You don't need to look at your feet to know this. There are many mechanoreceptors concentrated in the beak tip of chickens. These types of somatic sensory nerve cells respond to pressure or distortion. These enable chickens to peck at, manipulate and respond to very small objects. The beak is also innervated with nociceptors, which respond to stimuli that cause, or have the potential to cause, damage to the animal. These are usually felt as pain. This has implications for beak trimming, which is a common way of limiting the damage done during feather pecking or during the rough handling of females by males, who tend to grasp the female's neck during mating. However knowing that the beak is a highly sensitive organ helps to inform us of what are the best methods of trimming to use to limit pain to the birds. We will talk more about why we beak trim and the consequences of beak trimming later in the course.